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The Generator news service publishes articles on sustainable development, agriculture and energy as well as observations on current affairs. The news service is used on the weekly radio show, The Generator, as well as by a number of monthly and quarterly magazines. A podcast of the Generator news is also available.
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  • Keneally’s state plan leaked on the web

     

    Other aspects of the document, including photographs and chapter names, are identical.

    Have your say

    Senior government sources confirmed yesterday that the government intended to release the plan tomorrow morning before a Sky News debate between Ms Keneally and the Opposition Leader, Barry O’Farrell.

    The 2010 plan seems to have few targets changed from a plan released by the former premier Morris Iemma in 2006. The document reveals about ”75 per cent of the priorities and targets have been retained by the state plan launched in 2006”.

    An analysis of the document, on the www.nsw.gov.au/stateplan website, shows some targets have been watered down.

    The premature release on the internet comes after the government accidentally released its transport blueprint last month on the web. The Transport Minister, David Campbell, and Ms Keneally later apologised to Parliament after Mr Campbell called Herald journalists ”hackers” when the paper reported the early internet publication.

    The new plan has removed the 2006 targets for employment and community participation rates for people with mental illness.

    It also lacks data on how the government is performing in a range of health areas, including elective surgery and triage times.

    The plan downgrades the proportion of students it wants performing at the highest national standards in literacy and numeracy by 2016, from 15 per cent to 12 per cent.

    In 2006 the government set a target of 55,000 zoned and serviced lots ready for development in the greater Sydney region by last year. The target has not been reached, and the figure of 55,000 has been reset.

    However, in the new plan there is no longer a timeframe and new zoned and serviced lots on the central coast count towards the target.

    The executive director of the Urban Taskforce, Aaron Gadiel, said a number of performance indicators had been dropped because the government was not on track to meet them. The establishment of 43 bus corridors promised in 2006 is relisted as a goal, as are 1000 new buses. But the government has delivered only 300 additional buses and only six of the supposed 43 bus corridors.

    Phyllis Sakinofsky, a spokeswoman for Ms Burney, said the plan had been deliberately uploaded a fortnight ago. A report card on meeting targets would be released tomorrow. But web records show parts of the document were created on Monday.

    News the plan was already on the website without announcement was leaked to the National Party leader, Andrew Stoner.

    Mr Stoner said the plan was ”nothing short of a joke from an incompetent government that is out of ideas after 15 years”.

    ”NSW has broken down, but this sham of a plan contains nothing more than motherhood statements, fudged figures and watered-down targets.”

    Ms Keneally’s husband, Ben, a former management consultant who became a senior public servant under Mr Iemma, was an architect of the original plan.

    Targets in the 2010 plan include reducing property crime by 15 per cent by 2016, reducing personal crime by 10 per cent, reducing the proportion of offenders who reoffend within 24 months by 10 per cent by 2016, and a 7 per cent reduction in the overall level of homelessness in NSW by 2013.

  • Electric Vehicles Charge Ahead in US

     

    “You know, there’s a lot of excitement over this,” says Rich Feldman, a regional manager for eTec. “This is going to result in oil savings. There’s going to be jobs that come out of this project in terms of people installing the equipment. We’re obviously launching a whole new industry here. There’s going to be other spinoffs and economic opportunity.”

    Park, Plug in and Power Up

    Feldman is supervising the installation of more than 2,000 electric car chargers in the greater Seattle area in western Washington, and another 2,000 at homes and public places in four Oregon cities. They’ll be near shopping centers, fast food restaurants and movie theaters, “the variety of places that people think about when they’re able to park and leave the vehicle for an hour or two.”

    Feldman’s infrastructure company has partnered with Nissan. The car maker bought lots of ads during the Winter Olympics to promote its forthcoming all-electric model named the Leaf. Nissan is inviting drivers to sign up on its website to be among the first to buy one.

    Feldman says eTec hopes to convince a subset of Nissan Leaf buyers to participate in a study. It wants 900 drivers in each state to let researchers from the Idaho National Lab monitor their driving and charging behaviors. “In exchange, they get a free, home-based charging station,” he explains. Lessons learned about consumer preferences on placement, features and payment options could guide the eventual national rollout of charging infrastructure.

    The Nissan Leaf and the plug-in Chevy Volt are supposed to hit U.S. dealerships late this year. They’re the first wave of mass production electric cars. Mark Perry, who directs product planning for Nissan North America, says new owners will have no trouble finding a power station. “So the concern, ‘If I use this vehicle or purchase this vehicle, can I get charging?’ that’s going to be a very easy answer here.”

    The price of the fully electric Nissan is being announced at the end of March. Then the company will start taking deposits from consumers, who likely will pay a substantial premium over a comparable gasoline powered compact. The four-door, five-passenger Leaf has a range of about 160 kilometers.

    Perry says that Nissan will sell and lease the car and battery as a package. “There had been a lot of conversation about separation of car shell and battery and different approaches,” he said. “Nissan is still going to explore different business models in other parts of the world. But here in the U.S., definitely an entire transaction ? car and battery ? purchase or lease.”

    A World of Business Models for Electrics

    Other companies and countries are trying different business models to lure consumers into electric cars. Denmark is one nation on the cutting edge. A California-based company called Better Place is working with Denmark’s biggest utility to build the charging network there. It will offer battery swap-out stations, a feature not included initially in the United States.

    (Image, left: In Copenhagen, hotel owner Kirsten Brøchner gets behind the wheel of her leased Norwegian-made electric car. Credit: VOA – T. Banse)

    “We are building these switch stations here in Denmark ? a number of them ? so that when people want to cross the country, then they can very easily,” Utility CEO Anders Eldrup says. “If it works according to the plans ? we hope it will ? then you can, within three to four minutes, faster than you can put gasoline in your car, you can switch the battery for a brand new one, which is fully charged, and off you go.”

    When the system starts up next year, Danish electric vehicle drivers will pay a monthly subscription to access the battery charging network. They could also pay by the mile.

    But will consumers go for any of this? Vehicle researcher Valerie Karplus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says the car market is big enough to support numerous niches. But she adds, “It’s going to take consumers some time to sort out how they feel about going to a swap station, versus a gas station, versus charging at home. At the same time, today’s internal combustion engine cars are going to get more and more efficient. You may not have to go the gas station all that often with one of those cars.” She is looking forward to what she calls ‘an interesting technology race’.

    In Denmark, electric cars are exempt from the world’s highest car registration tax. That’s a big incentive, along with free parking on Copenhagen streets. 

    Washington State already exempts fully electric cars from its sales tax, and Nissan executives recently paid a call on legislators to talk up additional incentives. Free parking came up, along with access to carpool lanes. In Oregon, electric car enthusiasts want that state to increase the tax credit it offers to buyers of alternative fuel vehicles.

    Similar conversations are happening in government offices in Europe, East Asia and U.S. state capitals. Many policymakers, as well as drivers, find the prospect of a zero-emissions ride electrifying.

    Reprinted from Voice of America, a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 115 million people.

  • Having both emissions trading and feed-in tariffs is a waste of time.

    Having both emissions trading and feed-in tariffs is a waste of time

    Dan Box

    12th March, 2010

    The new feed-in tariffs are nothing if not controversial, but they also run the risk of conflicting with other, international, climate change policies

    Government climate change champion Ed Miliband calls it a ‘local energy revolution‘; the Independent ‘a real green money-spinner‘ that will ‘ease your eco-guilt’.

    What are they talking about? None other than the new ‘feed-in tariffs’, which mean that, from April 1st, power companies will pay you to generate electricity from solar panels or wind turbines on your roof.

    Now, I like free money as much as the next man, and my eyes lit up when I first heard of this idea. Only on closer inspection did I establish the problem; that in terms of fighting climate change, feed-in tariffs are a nonsense.

    One issue very well-rehearsed is that the Government’s plans will literally throw billions at promoting solar panels, which are a stupid way to generate electricity in this dark but windy country. Solar panels allow you to ease your eco-guilt expensively – they are effectively a fashion accessory, or eco-bling (there has been a fair ding-dong over this in the pages of the national press).

    Another fault is that forcing power companies to pay person X for his solar power will provoke them to put up all our bills in return – Miliband estimates by about £50 a year, though expect it to be more – creating a merry money-go-round where we pay with one hand and take with another (or, worse, where person X gets paid by person Y, who can’t afford any eco-bling herself).

    But, most seriously, feed-in tariffs simply don’t add up, for one good reason – the European Emissions Trading Scheme. Under the ETS, carbon reductions in one industry can be traded against increases elsewhere. The British launch lags an identical decision by the German government in 2000, a report on which published in the journal Energy Policy says feed-in tariffs ‘do not imply any additional emission reductions beyond those already achieved by ETS alone’.

    Either have feed-in tariffs, or emissions trading. Having both is a waste of time. Miliband’s revolution may be a votewinner, but in terms of cutting Britain’s carbon emissions, it looks dangerously like multi-billion pound coup de theatre, nothing else.

  • Air pollution death toll could hit 50,000 a year, say MPs

    Air pollution death toll could hit 50,000 a year, say MPs

    Ecologist

    22nd March 2010

    UK’s poor air quality is a bigger killer than passive smoking, road traffic accidents and obesity says parliamentary committee

    MPs have today delivered a damning assessment of the Government’s performance on tackling air quality issues.

    Poor air quality reduces average life expectancy in the UK by an average of seven to eight months and it could lead to up to 50,000 premature deaths every year, according to a report released today by the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC).

    The MPs said that the UK should be ‘ashamed’ of its air quality and called for dramatic changes to be made to the UK’s transport policy in order to improve the situation.

    The report said failing to act would result in EU fines, which could total as much as £300 million pounds. 

    Political ‘blame game’

    London was singled out for its continuing failure to meet targets on airborne particles known as PM10, which are particularly harmful for asthma sufferers. 

    ‘Nearly a third of asthma sufferers say that a reduction in air pollution is the single thing that would improve their quality of life in relation to their asthma,’ said a spokesperson for Asthma UK. 

    Experts pinned this lack of effective action in the capital on a ‘blame game’ between different levels of Government. Londoners now breathe the worst air in Europe, said Alan Andrews, a lawyer at Client Earth.

    ‘The Mayor is blaming national government for the failure and the Government is pointing the finger at the Mayor,’ he said. 

    ‘There is inertia in Government on this issue: the health impacts and costs of EU sanctions aren’t being factored into decision making,’ he added.

    Andrews called on the Government set up a national scheme for Low Emissions Zones, promote moves towards electrification and do more to combat ‘dirty diesel engines’ in taxis. 

    Technology failing lungs

    The other main source of air pollution highlighted in the report was nitrogen dioxide, which at times exceeds EU limits by 200 – 300 per cent on busy roads, according to Dr. Gary Fuller from The London Air Quality Network at King’s College London.

    ‘Technological measures are not yielding the necessary results: policy makers need to look at other alternatives which include changing demand for travel,’ said Fuller. 

    The EAC report did not specifically mention air transport but scientists and campaigners have highlighted the area around Heathrow airport as an air pollution hotspot.

    ‘Any third runway at Heathrow is going to make meeting European limits on nitrogen dioxide impossible,’ said Andrews. 

    Useful Links
    Environmental Audit Committee air pollution report

  • Atlantic Rising: How sea level rises are poisoning water in Ghana

    Atlantic Rising: How sea level rises are poisoning water in Ghana

    Will Lorimer

    2nd March, 2010

    In the latest blog the Atlantic Rising team look at how rising sea levels are poisoning local water sources in Western Ghana

    In Western Ghana, a sinister new picture of sea level change is emerging: salt water poisoning. 

    Rising sea levels have polluted the water sources of thousands of inhabitants, polluting their drinking water and creating an unprecedented rise in salt-related health problems.

    Largely ignored in the Ghanaian press, this is a candid portrait of environmental abuse and political mismanagement set to mushroom if current climatic trends continue.

    The Volta River

    The focus of the problem is Ada, a town of 20,000 people on the Volta river below the Akosombo dam. Over the last fifty years, mismanagement of this river system has reduced the flow of water to the town, allowing sea water to encroach upstream and pollute the water purification plants.

    The problem starts at the source of the river in northern Ghana.

    ‘Deforestation has completely removed the canopy layer.  This layer slowed the rate of run off and supplied the spring source,’ says Evans Balaara, head of water quality at the Ghana Water Company.

    ‘Evaporation rates have also increased as there is no vegetation to provide shade. Far less water is now reaching Lake Volta than when I was young.’

    Rising demand

    Rural-urban migration has led to further demands for the lake’s water.

    ‘The [water] infrastructure cannot keep pace with this increase,’ says Mr Balaara. 

    ‘At the moment Ghana Water Company cannot meet the demand from the city.’

    The government is planning to increase extraction with new plants and wider pipes, further reducing the flow in Ada and allowing sea water to infiltrate further upstream. 

    Rising salt levels

    ‘We have results from Ada when there is a spring tide.  The salt levels gets up to 350mg per litre, 150mg in excess of our limit of 200mg per litre,’ confirms Mr Balaara.

    The medical consequences of this have been dramatic.  Dr Philip Narh of Dangme East District Hospital has found that ‘2.7% of Ada residents are suffering from chronic heart related diseases. There has also been a dramatic increase in hypertension and stroke relate cases’.

    Framed within predictions of future sea level rise the prospects look grim. Mr Balaara conceded, ‘If sea level change happens, we are likely to lose Ada. At the moment we don’t have the money to do anything about this.’

    But by the time Ada’s first buildings tumble into the ocean, they will tumble from a land already desertified by the salt.

    In Ada, sea level did not begin with beach erosion or flooding, it began when the first person turned on their tap to taste the salty water infecting their waterways.

    Useful links
    Atlantic Rising

  • Wind contributing to Arctic sea ice loss, study finds

     

    The study does not question that global warming is also melting ice in the Arctic, but it could raise doubts about high-profile claims that the region has passed a climate “tipping point” that could see ice loss sharply accelerate in coming years.

    The new findings also help to explain the massive loss of Arctic ice seen in the summers of 2007-08, which prompted suggestions that the summertime Arctic Ocean could be ice-free withing a decade. About half of the variation in maximum ice loss each September is down to changes in wind patterns, the study says.

    Masayo Ogi, a scientist with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Yokohama, and her colleagues, looked at records of how winds have behaved across the Arctic since satellite measurements of ice extent there began in 1979.

    They found that changes in wind patterns, such as summertime winds that blow clockwise around the Beaufort Sea, seemed to coincide with years where sea ice loss was highest.

    Writing in a paper to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists suggest these winds have blown large amounts of Arctic ice south through the Fram Strait, which passes between Greenland and the Norwegian islands of Svalbard, and leads to the warmer waters of the north Atlantic. These winds have increased recently, which could help explain the apparent acceleration in ice loss.

    “Wind-induced, year-to-year differences in the rate of flow of ice toward and through Fram Strait play an important role in modulating September sea ice extent on a year-to-year basis,” the scientists say. “A trend toward an increased wind-induced rate of flow has contributed to the decline in the areal coverage of Arctic summer sea ice.”

    Ogi said this was the first time the Arctic winds have been analysed in such a way.

    “Both winter and summer winds could blow ice out of the Arctic [through] the Fram Strait during 1979-2009,” she said.

    A number of other factors were also responsible for ice loss, including warming of the air and ocean, she added.

    According to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic sea ice “is in a state of ongoing decline”. Since 1979, the ice has shrunk by about 10% a decade, or 28,000 square miles each year. The ice reaches its minimum extent each September, when it begins to reform as the freezing Arctic winter takes hold.